Concern over health of displaced people in east

The deteriorating health situation in areas occupied by eastern Uganda’s internally displaced people (IDPs) has reached crisis proportions, with malaria, measles, diarrhoea and pneumonia killing a number of people every day, according to camp residents and local health officials. Most of those dying from preventable diseases are young children. Parents in the camps are burying their young on a daily basis as attacks of malaria rage through the Teso region’s densely packed settlements. “The biggest problem here is coughing and fevers, with some diarrhoea,” said Peter Okama, a resident at the Nakatonya camp, a kilometre outside Soroti town. “My little girl of seven is very sick with a fever and we’ve had no treatment for two weeks. We took her to hospital but they didn’t have enough people. When we saw someone, he couldn’t diagnose it.” The prevalence of sickness in Soroti's camps is audible from the moment of entering them. Most of the children are coughing frequently and some of the younger children are visibly too weak to move. Reverend Sam Opol of the Church of Uganda, which has been distributing food to the camps, said the congestion inside the IDP camps was making them rife for disease. "One child gets a cough and they all get it," Opol told IRIN. He said local government officials had to work faster to get medical assistance to the camps. According to local health officials, medical assistance has been slow because they are under-staffed and under-resourced. “We have just mobilised workers but even now we have only four in each camp,” Soroti district health secretary May Anero told IRIN. “Sanitation is the big problem because of the congestion in the areas where IDPs are camped. Latrines are nearly full and people are getting sick from water borne diseases.” Anero also said Soroti still has a drug shortage, despite some aid which arrived a few weeks ago. But Mads Oyen, child protection officer with UNICEF, said the government had requested the UN Children's Fund not to supply any more drugs until the local health authorities in Teso purchased their own with money already allocated.